The Women's Cancers Program is a formal, focused interdisciplinary research program devoted to cancers of the breast and female reproductive tract.
The program takes advantage of the extraordinary racial-ethnic diversity among the 10 million residents of Los Angeles County, the population served by the USC/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. Its goal is to understand the reasons for the underlying differences in breast and gynecologic cancer incidence, mortality and survival among the numerically predominant racial-ethnic groups in the county (African Americans, Latinas, Japanese, Chinese, Filipinas, Koreans and non-Latina whites).
Researchers have these scientific aims:
The program takes a multifaceted approach involving epidemiology and prevention scientists, behavioral scientists, tumor biologists and molecular geneticists, and radiation, surgical and medical oncologists. The 28 members of the program come from nine academic departments in two schools.
Numerous patient and data resources are used in the program's research. These include the Los Angeles County Cancer Surveillance Program, a Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) registry; a large registry of breast cancer in twins; dietary, lifestyle and genetic data from well-characterized, large and ethnically diverse cohorts, including the Multiethnic Cohort Study; the California Teachers Study; a large and diverse clinical population seen at USC/Norris-affiliated hospitals; and several large tumor and other biological sample repositories for studies of tumor biology and molecular genetics.
The integrated, multidisciplinary Harold E. and Henrietta C. Lee Women's Center is planned as an expansion of the established Lee Breast Center in the USC/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, providing an environment favorable to patient care and clinical research. The program was awarded a Breast Cancer Center of Excellence award by the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command.
